A Theory of Pointers for the UTP

Hoare and He’s unifying theories of programming (UTP) provide a collection of relational models that can be used to study and compare several programming paradigms. In this paper, we add to the UTP a theory of pointers and records that provides a model for objects and sharing in languages like Java and C++. Our work is based on the hierarchical addressing scheme used to refer to record fields (or object attributes) in conventional languages, rather than explicit notions of location. More importantly, we support reasoning about the structure and sharing of data, as well as their, possibly infinite, values. We also provide a general account of UTP theories characterised by conjunctive healthiness conditions, of which our theory is an example.